Now Assist Readiness Evaluation: System Properties Reference

[Sharon_Barnes]

Now Assist Readiness Evaluation: System Properties Reference

Family Release: Yokohama Release: 1.0.5 Roles Required: admin

Overview

The Now Assist Readiness Evaluation (NARE) is your built-in tool for understanding how ready your ServiceNow instance is to get the most out of Now Assist capabilities. It scans your environment, scores your readiness, surfaces issues, and estimates the remediation effort — all in one place.

The good news: NARE ships with all of its system properties pre-configured with sensible defaults, so it works right out of the box. You don't need to do anything to get started.

That said, these properties are designed to be adjusted. Your instance size, team workflows, and deployment scope may mean the defaults aren't a perfect fit. This post explains what each property controls and what you can expect if you modify or disable it — so you can tune NARE with confidence.

💡 Navigate to System Properties in your ServiceNow instance and filter by the sn_assess namespace to locate all NARE-related settings.

Performance & Processing Limits

These two properties control how much data NARE evaluates during a scan. The defaults strike a balance between thoroughness and performance, but you may want to tune them for larger instances or more targeted assessments.

sn_assess.assessment_limit

This property defines the maximum number of records the assessment process evaluates during an instance scan. If set to 10,000, for example, NARE analyzes up to 10k records per run — keeping scans predictable and contained.

If you increase or remove this limit:

1. NARE may process a significantly larger volume of records.
2. On large instances, this can mean longer scan times and higher system load during the assessment window.
3. If you're making a substantial change, test during off-peak hours to observe the impact before committing to new values.

sn_assess.task_limit

Where assessment_limit caps the total scan scope, task_limit controls the maximum number of records processed per individual assessment task within that scan.

If you increase or remove this limit:

1. On instances with high record volumes, a very high value here can delay results and affect overall system responsiveness during assessment runs.

💡 These two properties work in tandem. If you're adjusting one, consider whether the other also needs updating. Testing during off-peak hours lets you observe the performance impact before committing to new values.

Scoring & Threshold Configuration

sn_assess.Threshold

This property sets the percentage threshold that determines how readiness status displays on the NARE Home page. When your score meets or exceeds the threshold, status shows as Good; below it, you'll see Action Required. The default gives you a meaningful starting point, and it's straightforward to adjust to reflect your organization's own readiness standard.

If you change this value:

1. The Good / Action Required status on the Home page updates to reflect the new threshold.
2. Raising the value sets a stricter bar; lowering it makes Good status easier to achieve.
3. Since this directly shapes how stakeholders read assessment results, align the value with your team's actual expectations before sharing reports externally.

Remediation Effort Visibility & Sizing

One of NARE's most useful features is its ability to estimate how much work remediation will take — displayed as T-shirt sized effort pills (Small, Medium, Large) across the UI and in downloaded reports. Three properties work together to drive this feature, and all three are enabled and configured by default.

sn_assess.effort_visibility

This is the master toggle for the remediation effort display. When enabled, you'll see effort pills, the Remediation Effort tab, and the Legends button throughout the application.

If you disable this property:

1. The Remediation Effort tab will be hidden across all pages.
2. Effort pills will be removed from the Download Report.
3. The Legends button will no longer appear in the UI.
4. Note that the underlying effort data is still calculated — it just won't be surfaced in the interface.

sn_assess.TShirtMetric

This property assigns numeric effort values to specific types of issues and customizations. Those values power the effort calculations displayed throughout the application.

If you modify this property:

1. Effort calculations across the application will reflect your updated values after your next assessment run.
2. This is particularly useful if the default weighting doesn't match how your team estimates work — for instance, if certain issue types consistently take more or less effort in your environment than the defaults assume.

sn_assess.TShirtSize

This property maps T-shirt size labels to effort in days — for example, Small = 5 days, Medium = 10 days. These mappings appear in the effort pills and Legends throughout the application.

If you modify this property:

1. The effort-in-days values shown in Remediation Effort pills and Legends will update to reflect your mappings.
2. When customizing, review TShirtMetric at the same time — if the two are out of sync, displayed effort estimates can become inconsistent.

💡 effort_visibility, TShirtMetric, and TShirtSize are all interconnected. When customizing effort sizing, review all three together to keep calculations and display labels in sync.

Scheduled Assessment Jobs

NARE includes scheduled jobs that automatically run assessments for each major Now Assist capability area. Each is controlled by its own property and ships enabled by default for the capabilities you have deployed. Set a property to true to enable the job, or false to disable it.

Available Job Properties

sn_assess.va — Virtual Agent assessments

sn_assess.hrsd — HR Service Delivery assessments

sn_assess.csm — Customer Service Management assessments

sn_assess.ai_search — AI Search assessments

sn_assess.itsm — IT Service Management assessments

If you disable a job:

1. Automated assessments will stop running for that capability area.
2. Existing data is retained, but it won't be refreshed until the job is re-enabled or an assessment is triggered manually.

💡 These jobs are most useful when scoped to the Now Assist capabilities you are actually working to deploy. Disabling jobs for capabilities not yet in use keeps your assessment results focused on what's relevant right now.

Conclusion 

NARE is built to work out of the box — but it's also built to be customized. Whether you're tuning performance limits for a large instance, adjusting the readiness threshold to reflect your team's standards, or tailoring effort sizing to match how your organization estimates work, these properties give you the control you need.

A good rule of thumb when making changes: adjust one property at a time, rerun the assessment, and observe the results before moving on. That makes it easy to understand what each change affects — and to roll back cleanly if something doesn't look right.

Check out the Next Experience Center of Excellence for more resources